Ascension Sunday and Mother’s Day Sermon

Ascension Sunday (May 12, 2013)

“While he blessed them, he parted from them, and was carried up into heaven.”

+ In the Name of God: Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

A friend of mine reminded me of the “catholic” way of looking at Mother’s Day. She said: “[It] is a special day for many, but to those who’ve lost their moms, are in the waiting season of becoming a mom, or have lost a pregnancy, you are not forgotten. May [it] be a day that isn’t filled with sadness, but hope. May you know how you touch others’ lives in ways that is mother-like. You may be that only mother-figure to someone that needs it. So [while], we celebrate mothers, [we] celebrate you, too.”

This view of motherhood is very Catholic for it touches at the very core of the concept of us being the adopted children of God and of Mary. Today we celebrate the Feast of the Ascension, which completes and closes the earthly life of Christ. Christ ascended – totally human and totally divine – not just up in the air, but also out of our time and space into God’s presence. God’s same method of entering and exiting our time and space continues on even after the Ascension. “A sacrament,” Fr. Homer Rogers tells us, “is an occasion in space and time in which the Christian is brought infallibly into contact with God. Something done and something said – and a spiritual consequence follows.”

Our salvation by God was enacted by his adoption of us, both spiritually and physically because Jesus Christ – the second Person of the Trinity – took on human nature in addition to his divine. But if God is our Father due to Christ’s divinity, then Mary is our Mother due to his humanity. May, Mary’s month, is traditionally celebrated with a May Crowning and a procession of her Image, but perhaps another year for us. Today, after Mass, we’ll pray the Rosary and when we offer our petitions to God and ask for her intercession, meditate on the mystery of the Ascension: that in this event, humanity itself is now liberated of being completely restrained entirely by time and space due to it begin united to divinity in Christ. One only needs to think of some of the more extraordinary out-of-body experiences recorded lately by doctors – such as people even going down halls in hospitals and seeing things that would have been impossible to see with any other explanation. This perhaps is a glimpse of what are the results of the resurrection and ascension. “But Christ was able to walk through walls even with his physical body before the Ascension,” you might wonder. “And surely people had near-death experiences before Christ came.” This is precisely my point: God redeems us both inside and outside of time and space. This is how salvation comes to all people, before and after Christ’s earthly life. The incarnation, the life, death, resurrection, and ascension are real and affect the physical world around us; Christianity is not just a mere moral code of private living with strange superstitious beliefs.

That would be the government’s new definition of “religion” and that is not true Religion. We are physically, not just spiritually, adopted children of God and Mary, his mother and ours. This is shown in the fact that immediately before Jesus ascends into heaven, he told the disciples to wait for the coming of the Spirit on Pentecost; “Behold, I am with you always;” the fact that he comes back to us under the forms of Bread and Wine at every Mass, and is present with us in every Catholic tabernacle; but also because he blessed them while he was carried up into heaven! As he ascended – in the very process of rising in the sky – Jesus blesses his followers!

“While he blessed them, he parted from them, and was carried up into heaven.”

I should have said, while he blessed them, he ascended into heaven, because the act of blessing was and is today still, his primary one! These are signs of him being our big brother, and yet our Lord and our God! His Father becomes ours. And his mother, our mother.

On this Mother’s Day, we must remember to ask our spiritual Mother, Mary, for her intercession. Women must emulate her as the best example of motherhood. Those who’ve struggled with relating to their earthly mothers: Mary can help. Those who’ve lost children: Mary has been there. To all those dedicated mothers who work so hard to provide and raise their children: thank you. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.